[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everybody. Welcome along to this week's Friday Freebie edition of the Dispatches podcast. My name is Brendan Malone and it is great to be back with you again. Whatever platform you're listening on right now, please subscribe if you're not already a subscriber, and if you can, please give the show some stars and a bit of a rating. All of that really, really helps us out with the algorithm being the way that it is. Today's episode is a special interview, an exclusive interview with an awesome lady called Jenny. She is a good friend of Leftfoot Media. You might remember that we spoke to her a couple years ago during the COVID period on one of our Monday Night Live episodes, and she shared the profoundly moving and just amazing story of her family and going through the experience of losing their young daughter, Tara to terminal illness. Very, very powerful story and conversation that we had together. Now, Jenny is someone who is concerned about the issue of abortion. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking to her about an astounding experience that she had of engaging with the New Zealand system and using the Official Information act to try and get basic information, to try and ensure basic transparency to find out about what was actually going on in regards to the practice of abortion in her local region and the process that she was dragged through, the hoops that she was forced to jump through. And the way this whole situation played out was really quite astounding. And it points to the fact that there is a weaponisation of sorts of the Official Information act, of the bureaucratic processes that is going on here to try and hide from the public what is actually going on with the issue of abortion. And this story would be strange enough in its own right if that were the whole issue. But she actually took the next step of making a complaint to the ombudsman. And even at that stage of the process, and I won't spoil any of this for you, it's really quite amazing how that played out because even that raises huge questions. One last thing before we start this interview. Don't forget that you can support our work by becoming a dollar five monthly
[email protected]. Leftfootmedia the link is in today's show notes, and if you do become a dollar five monthly patron, then you will get an exclusive patrons only episode of the Dispatches podcast every single day of the week from Monday to Friday. So without any further ado, let's start today's episode and hear what Jenny has to say about this quite astounding experience that she went through.
Hi, my name is Brendan Malone, and you're listening to the dispatches, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
Jenny, thank you so much. You are not new to. I was gonna say, well, you're new to the podcast, but not new to left foot media. We've had you on a couple of times now to share your family story, but today we're gonna be talking about an astounding incident. I think that's a fair way to describe it. Would you agree with that?
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I agree. Yeah. Shocking.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: And it's like here's someone trying to engage with the system to get what should be very transparent and very basic levels of information. But you've had to jump through hoops. The.
I don't want to create any spoiler alerts here, but there is an ombudsman who's been involved. There's an outcome, and even the outcome, the whole thing is just bizarre. And it really points to a system that has an inherent nature which hides important information. And in this case, we're talking about the issue of abortion. So it's really important that we know and have transparency, but this would apply to all sorts of other issues in other areas as well around other policies. But let's start on this question of how you were initially in a position where you thought, I've got to ask information. I've got to submit an official information request on this issue of abortion in my local area.
Why did you do that? What prompted you to do that? Why is it appropriate for you to be doing that kind of thing? Like, to show people that you're not just wasting time here for officials in our country?
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Well, Kia Ora. Thank you, Brendan. Thanks for having me on the podcast.
So I've been involved in voice for Life Rotorua, since we were established four years ago. So I'm the current chair of Voice for Life Rotarua. So we have several kaupapa to our mahi that we do in Roturua. We have outreach to mums and outreach to the community about pro life issues. We also have an arm where we're working on finding out the information so that we can be politically active in the area, so that we can be informed and have conversations based in truth with people and show what an issue it is in Rotorua, in our local community, and in order to come from a position of knowledge, I really wanted to get the actual statistics of the abortions taking place in our hospital, because the national abortion report is quite vague now that comes out annually. So this started way back at the start of 2021. I wanted to get information around the gestation of abortions that happen at Rotorua Hospital from 2020. So I did an official Information act request to the Lakes DHB on the 9 May 2021, thinking naively that I'd get a prompt response in the 20 working days that are outlined in the Official Information act request legislation from 1982. But I didn't actually get a proper answer until the 29 September 2021. But that was when they gave their best answer. But it was an absolute rigmarole to get to that point.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: So, first of all, there's a 20 day limit here that's supposed to be enforced, and there are exemptions they can apply for. Like, if what you're asking for, maybe, I don't know, you're asking for some, um, archived information that requires some extra amount of effort or something that might require them to, say, redact a whole lot of information and only give you certain parts of a document that might take a little bit longer. But even then, you. You started in, what was the date? The 20th of.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Oh, so 9 May 2021.
[00:07:01] Speaker A: 9 May 2021. And then it took them until September to even give you the first response.
[00:07:06] Speaker B: So, no, not the first. The first response. I said, one of the questions was, can you give me a breakdown of the gestation of abortions that have happened in Rotorua hospital in 2020? And their response to that answer was along the lines of, Rotorua hospital performs abortions until 14 weeks gestation.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So they didn't even answer the question.
[00:07:30] Speaker B: They didn't even answer the question. So then I. Then I appealed that answer and said, okay, I'm going to break it down. And I said, how many babies are aborted until six weeks? How many babies are aborted until twelve weeks? How many babies are aborted till 16 weeks? And I broke it down like that.
[00:07:49] Speaker A: Can I ask you, how long did it take you to get that first response? Where. Clearly they're now playing games, right? They're playing silly, silly games here, where they're saying, well, let's give a vague non answer. That very first reply you got. How long did that take to get that reply?
[00:08:05] Speaker B: So I had to send them a reminder on the 21st day. So the 21st business day, I said, I haven't had an answer. Could I have an answer? And then they sent me back and they said, oh, we need an extension. They sent me back an answer within a few days, but it wasn't really an answer.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: So that's their very first reply. The non answer was about 30 days, almost 30 days before the answer with a non answer.
[00:08:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And then the second answer they put, because I said, babies. How many babies were aborted on you?
[00:08:38] Speaker A: So just so people are clear, you get this non answer and you go, okay, now I have to get really silly about this myself, and I have to give really explicit and very specific questions, lots of them, to get myself in such a situation where they have to just. They can't avoid answering. And how long does it take you from sending that new updated version where you have to get really specific before you get the next answer?
[00:09:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So another. Another full four weeks. And right on the day I get an answer that said zero. Zero. Oh, none. None, none, none, none.
[00:09:16] Speaker A: So remind people again, those questions you asked were how many babies were aborted at, and then you had gestation, and you had a whole series of those questions.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And they said, none, none, none, none, none. Even though there was, I think it was 568 abortions total. They said none to each gestation on the grounds, I presume that I'd use the word baby instead of embryo or.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: Freak fetus, because they mentioned that, didn't they? What did they say?
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Yeah. So they didn't actually say. They just said that in the Ombudsman investigation, which took two years to get to, they said that I'd use the wrong terminology.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: And you only found that out just recently when the Ombudsman finally replied, yeah.
[00:10:02] Speaker B: So I presume that that's what it was. So I did a third official information act request in the August of 2021.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: And said, how many abortions were performed on women up to nine weeks gestation? How many abortions were performed on women up to twelve weeks gestation? To which I got accurate answers, but that took until the 29 September 2021. So over four and a half months since my initial request to find out how many babies were aborted. During that final answer, I found out that there were three babies aborted between 15 weeks and 19 weeks, which Rotorua hospital says they only perform abortions up to 14 weeks.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Okay, so there's a. Straight away, there's an issue that you've discovered that's quite serious, and this is why transparency is important and public accountability. Remember, we are supposed to live in a democracy, which is all about public accountability and the people being the governors, the masters of their own fate. And you can only do that if you know what's going on. So you've discovered something here, but you've had to go through this whole rigmarole over a period of months, and quite clearly, initially, you've been unfairly treated based solely on a disagreement around terminology, around the use of the word babies.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So there was a. Like I didn't say anywhere in my official information act request that I was from a pro life organization. I used my name, I used my own address, I used my own email address.
I was just a member of the public who asked questions without any reference to my moral or political opinion or stance on abortion, and they were that evasive with the answers. And then, so throughout asking for information, further questions came up around the disposal of an inverted commas, products of conception, or in my terminology, the baby that has been aborted around. What happens to the babies and the routero. So the lakes DHB said that sometimes the babies are cremated and spread on a memorial garden, to which I thought, that's just made up. And so I added that into my official information request, asking where that garden was.
[00:12:31] Speaker A: So you think that they were again fobbing you off and they were just saying any old thing that seemed legit? Oh, we do a cremation and then we just sprinkle the ashes. And you thought, this doesn't sound right.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And I asked them. So, further, as more data started coming out or loosening up in terms of getting more and more vague in the abortion report that comes out nationally, I noticed that ethnicity was no longer broken down in the same way. And so I requested for information around ethnicity of women who were having abortions in Rotorua. And they refused to give me that data. They refused to give me data on how iwi and Hap were consulted in Rotorua. Because there's an issue in Rotorua where the hospital grounds were actually gifted by iwi and abortions started being performed at our hospital without iwi being consulted. So I asked for how iwi were consulted, and the answer to that question was, iwi were consulted. They didn't answer what my question actually was. And so what I kept doing was adding this to my file with my eventual complaint to the, um, Lisbon, which I took out in March 2022.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Cause I was getting so frustrated with these vague, evasive answers that I started a file with the ombudsman, and every time I got a terrible answer or a frustrating answer or a delayed answer, I just added it to my file of complaint.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: So just to be clear here, you had to file a complaint after almost a full year of back and forth. And every one of those interactions you had, there was some other bit of information where they were either evasive or they were deliberately.
They were playing games, basically, with you. And there was information that was not being revealed. Right. Is that what's going on that whole time?
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Absolutely. And it felt mocking, like. It felt like there was a mocking element to it.
And.
Yeah, just from the pushing out of timelines and the just not being straight up with answers, I was like, this is a mockery of a democratic process, you know? And I know from having been involved in hospital care that your ethnicity is absolutely recorded at every step of the process. And the fact that they said this information is too hard to gather. The ethnicity of women who have had abortions, I was like, that's just a lie.
Because. And I believe that the motivation behind that is because abortions in Rotorua very, very disproportionately affect our Mori community.
And that's from going on historic data and seeing the increase. And because what my aim was is to gather a picture for iwi, to present it to iwi of how disproportionate Mori are represented in abortion statistics.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Cause you're quite connected at iwi level, right? You have that sort of relationship and you want this to be sort of more of a holistic sort of engagement with this issue and a genuine sort of, hey, we're in this community. This is our community. This issue affects us, and there should be a proper dialogue around all these issues. Right?
[00:15:50] Speaker B: Absolutely. I mean, frankly, in Rotorua, it's a eugenics. And I know that sounds very dramatic, but that is what it is. It is.
I mean, for example, this is a little bit of a segue, but for example, my husband and I lived in quite a poor part of Rotorua for a long time. After we had our third child, we got a phone call from our medical centre saying, hey, you're entitled to a free vasectomy now because you've had three children. Would you like to come in and book that in, wow, you know, predominantly Mori part of town, just this assumption. You are poor, you live in poverty, this is what's best for you. And I do think it's an entrenched part of our culture here in Rotorua that that's actually just acceptable, you know?
[00:16:37] Speaker A: So there was no other reason for the phone call. They're just saying, hey, we're offering you a sterilization procedure.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because you've got three kids, you live in a low decile area, part of Rotorua. So guess what? Hooray. You're entitled to this. Let's limit the size of your family.
[00:16:52] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: So we showed them and had two.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: More kids take that state.
Yeah. So at no point, though, in this process, are you in ever asking stupid or inappropriate questions of your own, right? You're not trying to probe for information that you tell us their addresses or tell us names, nothing like that at all, right?
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Absolutely not. It was all around really basic information, around numbers, around ethnicity, around the ways that abortion procedures happen, whether it's surgical or medical, the types of surgical abortions, basically chit chat that I've heard around Rotorua, within the pro life community, and wanting to find the facts around it, because I believe if I've got the facts, then I can actually combat all of that chat and go, this is actually the issue that we're facing.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Yeah. And you can be more effective in the position that you're advocating for. Right. Because you know what's truly happening. It's not just gossip and hearsay.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:18:00] Speaker A: And so you find yourself on the ends of this very, very frustrating process where information is being withheld. There is deliberate delaying tactics, and I assume they are, what, hoping that you'll just go away? Is that what you think is going on?
[00:18:15] Speaker B: That's exactly what it felt like. And so I just kept reiterating my questions clearly and adding to them.
And then I got to the point of just utter frustration and informed the Lakes DHB that I would now be complaining to the ombudsman because of lack of information and lack of transparency.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: So that's march.
You inform them in March and then make you a complaint in March, is that right? Of 2022?
[00:18:46] Speaker B: I made the complaint the same day that I informed them that I was unsatisfied with their answers and complained to the ombudsman. And then it took, let's see, it took until November 2023 until the investigation actually took place.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Wow. So, but just to clarify, we're talking about an investigation of how many pieces of correspondence, like, emails did you send? Do you think that you were complaining about? Was it two, three, four messages back and forth or what?
[00:19:23] Speaker B: No, it was probably.
It was four distinct official Information act requests that weren't responded to correctly. And then in between emails, you know, saying, hey, this is late. That's late. I'm still waiting on a response.
[00:19:38] Speaker A: If I was to sit down and read the totality of the correspondence, would it take me an hour, half an hour? A day, two days? How long would it take me to read all of that previous correspondence?
[00:19:48] Speaker B: 2 hours max. If you were actually trying to get a really good, really good understanding of it and read it thoroughly, I'd say 2 hours max.
[00:19:56] Speaker A: And so 2 hours worth of correspondence that needs to be read. That's all the evidence that there is. And probably some other interviewing questions of the DHB about what's going on and why did they respond the way they did. But how long did that investigation process take?
[00:20:10] Speaker B: So I kept from when I complained in March 22 until when I got the notification that the investigation had started was until 7 November 2023.
[00:20:24] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:20:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: They didn't even start. It took them that long to actually start it.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Yeah. But in between they keep saying this. I got multiple emails. I don't know if they were automatically generated or not. Maybe eight to ten emails saying, your file has been handed to an investigator, your file has been handed to an investigator. And then every now and again I'd get a personal email saying, are you still interested in carrying on this complaint? Yes, I am. And that just went on and on and then, so I just kept adding to the file.
[00:20:56] Speaker A: This starts to feel now like a repeat of what you've already been through, where it's almost like now at the complaint phase, there's another procedure whereby the system is trying to actually just weed out as many complaints as possible by discouraging people. They eventually come back and go, oh, don't worry about it.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what it felt like. It felt like it was just trying to weight me out and wear me down until I was no longer emotional about it. But I wasn't actually even emotional about it. I was just like, I'm going to push this democratic process until the end because there has to be some accountability even to the ombudsman's office.
I joked with you last week, Brendan. I wonder how you make a complaint to the ombudsman about the ombudsman's office.
And yeah, so there was another complicating factor was of course, the establishment of te whare where the DHB's were disestablished. And so I got, and I ended up doing another official information act request to Te Whaatu order, asking for specifics because various things have been removed from the national abortion report.
And so I did that request in March 2023. And the te whilst was even worse than Lakes DHB. So I added that to the ombudsman's complaint.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: So could, you know, at that point when you complain to te whata ora, where is that complaint going? Is that going to the central committee in Wellington somewhere, or where do you know where that's going?
[00:22:28] Speaker B: I've got no idea. Because it ended up. I did my complaint to the Lakes DHB, and then it got forwarded to Te Whuz. It changed. And then they said I needed to fill in the actual portal of OIA requests on the Te Whura website, which they never sent me an email to say, this is what your complaint was. So I can't even read any more of what my complaint was because it went through some portal. I'm an educator person. I've been a teacher for 23 years. I've got a bachelor of education. I've continued an ongoing professional development. This was a really complicated legal process, and I'm not sure how all of our peers within our community of every educational level are supposed to access this democratic process, because I'm pretty tenacious and I'm pretty good with words, and it was really hard and really complicated to actually get any sort of sensible answer from anybody.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: So you lay your complaint march of 2022, and then before your complaint is even heard, you have to wait until November 2023, over a year and a half before they even hear the complaint. Now, let's give them a bit of grace. Okay. There was this transition to the new national committee, te Whata Ora. But leaving that aside all that time, and then November 2023, what happens at that point with your complaint?
[00:23:52] Speaker B: So I just got a notification saying, your complaint is now under investigation with an investigator, and named the investigator. Then I was told to keep it confidential. At that point, I wasn't allowed to talk to anybody, or particularly media, what was happening with my ombudsman complaint. And they said that they were going to talk to people up at the hospital and find out what had happened. And then I got an initial or likely decision sent to me on the 7 February this year, which was after they had spoken to people who had answered the OIAs at Roturu hospital.
[00:24:33] Speaker A: So it's kind of weird, right? Instead of just being told the outcome, you get told, this is what could happen, we think will happen.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: So that was from the investigator, and it was like a summary of the response from the hospital and then likely findings of the ombudsman, all of those found in the favor of the DHB Orotsuro hospital.
And they invited me for comment, and I was like, well, I didn't even reply because I thought, I've got nothing else to add. You have all the information.
I'm sick to death of the process. By this point, I'm just starting back at school teaching and with my kids, I was like, I don't have time for this. And I thought, there's nothing else to add.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: You think it's game over at this point, do you, when you get a likely finding saying you're gonna lose, your complaint won't go any further, you think, oh, that's it, why bother?
[00:25:21] Speaker B: Yeah. And there was absolutely no acknowledgement of any complaints that I made in that initial finding. It was all in the favor of Lakes DHB.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: And then what happens next? So you've basically washed your hands of it. And then the ombudsman replies.
[00:25:37] Speaker B: So I had until the 22 February to reply. I just didn't reply, just got on with my life.
And then come the 18 march, I get the official decision from the ombudsman, Peter Beaucher, and it finds two thirds in favour that the DHB acted unreasonably on my Official Information act requests.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Unbelievable.
Who's telling you? Do you know where the investigator is based? Who actually did the investigation? Are they in the DHB?
[00:26:09] Speaker B: No. Well, it seemed to me that they were from Wellington.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:13] Speaker B: It seemed to me that they were actually removed from. They were more an ombudsman investigator rather than somebody from Te Wh Tu Ora or Lakes DHB.
[00:26:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:23] Speaker B: But it was just so bizarre to have the likely decision being that it was all in the favour of the DHB and then the official finding being mostly in my favour and saying that the DHB needed to take learnings in terms of essentially being evasive, not providing a complainant with support, using the correct medical terminology, being unreasonable, being untimely, not providing me with the information around ethnicity of women because they did in fact have that information. Not providing me with how they consulted with iwi because they did in fact have that information and they didn't even try to find it. The findings from the ombudsman revealed the only things that I didn't win on were around one additional complaint about untimeliness. I lost that because of some public holidays thrown in there. And then the complaint I made about not telling me the location of the so called memorial cremation garden for aborted babies. The ombudsman agreed that I didn't have a right to know that.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: I disagree with that, but I kind of get a sense of why they might want to hide that because they maybe are fearful of that public venue might become a place of protest when people might be going there to mourn or something like that. You can sort of see maybe what they're thinking.
[00:27:43] Speaker B: Well, that's what they said. And they cited the new safe safe areas bill as a reason for that.
[00:27:49] Speaker A: Now, that's the problem, though, right? Because the safe areas legislation does not apply to a memorial garden. The safe areas legislation, which creates these 150 metre, well, actually 300 metre bubble zones around an abortion facility, only apply to facilities where abortions are carried out. Not a memorial garden.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: Exactly. But it's like any legislation that limits people's freedom tends to get a little bit more extended here and there and cited here and there, and then before you know it, it becomes case law that, oh, it does apply to this and it does apply to that.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Before we get to unpacking this complaint a little bit more and the finding a little bit more, you, on that point of safe areas, you've actually had an experience too. Last year, wasn't it, where you were contacted or you had a police officer turn up to a peaceful vigil the day after the safe areas legislation came in and basically you got a warning, right?
[00:28:42] Speaker B: It was pretty close to when the legislation had changed and we were at voice for life, Rotterdira. We were all over that. We knew exactly where we could stand. We stand out at the hospital on Wednesdays and Thursdays because that's when abortions take place. So we knew exactly to the centimetre where we could stand. So we stood there with our toes on the line and a police officer was waiting when we got there and came over and had a chat to us and was like, oh, you're aware of the new laws? And we're like, yeah, yeah, we're aware. And he was like, well, you know, you can't really be here. We're like, yep, we can be here to this line.
And, you know, we're not approaching women. We're standing here peacefully. He goes, well, I'm not going to give you an official warning today. I was like, well, you can't give us an official warning because we're not doing anything illegal. And we had this kind of. Of jovial to and fro with this lovely kind of 22 year old police officer who had obviously had a call from somebody up at the hospital who had complained because he knew to wait there for us.
[00:29:42] Speaker A: That's astounding to me, that, like, someone is even saying to a law enforcement officer is even saying, and you've clearly measured out exactly what the law says, you're allowed to be in this place, but not in this spot. You're in the spot where you're allowed to be. You're peaceful. It's a prayerful sort of peaceful vigil atmosphere. And you are being told by a police officer, well, I could actually. I could give you some sort of censure, legal censure. Fine, whatever the case may be, even though you're not doing anything wrong.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: An amazing aspect of that is since we have moved to the new spot that we're allowed to be, we have had so much more engagement from the public. And I think that just shows how involved God is in all of these things, because, you know, God's going to get the last laugh. It's amazing we've moved to this new spot and it's way more public and.
[00:30:30] Speaker A: But also in relation to that, Jenny, is the fact that, like, and, you know, Rotorua has some pretty serious social issues around crime and things like that, and police resources are scarce, and yet there's a police officer waiting for you to issue warnings. To protect what? Abortion. The abortion industry in New Zealand, instead of actually policing what is an area where they do need extra policing support.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: Just to paint a picture. This is me, you know, I'm 44 and a lovely lady in her mid sixties. And then Kay, who is the most amazing mid 80 year old you've ever seen.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:12] Speaker B: You know, there are three very unthreatening people standing there with signs saying, you're a mama, choose life, choose love. You know, these are really unthreatening people. And, yeah, the police turned up to have a chat.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: Far out, man. That's crazy. And so, in Rotorua, we've got, you know, you've had three kids. We'll offer to sterilize you. The police will turn up to protect the abortion industry and they will imply that perhaps they will censure you in some way for not breaking the law.
And you've got a official information act inquiry type system where information is being hidden from you. And now we get to the stage where finally the ombudsman actually makes a ruling after you've been told by an investigator, no, look, you're gonna lose. You actually. Well, you win. It's fair to say you do win. Right?
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Yeah, we win. And te whu tu ora have been ordered to send us an apology and, well, me and ta sent us an apology and to review their processes around official Information act and to review the legislation around Official Information act requests. So I'm still waiting on my apology. I'm not holding my breath because I quite like breathing.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: So you'll get it by your 50th birthday.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Probably, and it'll be framed and I'll feel very proud. But I already have my next Official Information act request question in the barrel, and it's going to be fired fairly soon.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: So you're now the ombudsman. Actually, you've indicated this already. The ombudsman actually pointed to the fact that the silly games they played around terminology where you had asked, you know, how many babies were aborted at x number of weeks. Sorry, how many babies were aborted at this different number of weeks. Basically, the ombudsman has indicated that that was one of those cases where they have. They deliberately refused to answer simply because they deemed that you hadn't used the correct newspeak word. I guess they were looking for products of conception or fetuses or something like that instead.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: Right, exactly. And, you know, I think in respect to the general public, we should be able to use. We're not doctors, we're not, you know, we're not. We're not nurses, we're not healthcare workers.
There should be an assumption from a government department that any terminology that we use that is easily understood should be given the benefit of the doubt. It was obvious what I was saying.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Yeah. How do you have accountability, I guess, for the next stage, because the ombudsman has said they need to actually change. There needs to be improvement here. But how do you know that that's happened?
[00:33:52] Speaker B: I'm going to do an official information act request to see how they have followed up on the ombudsman's recommendations, because I think with the amalgamation of DHB's and becoming, well, disestablishment of DHB's and te wh tu ora, I think there is going to be problems with this overarching authority. And, you know, people will just shove it from one desk to another going, well, that's not this board. That's that board. That's not this desk, that's that desk. And how are we ever going to know the truth if these things are just shifted around from one person to the next?
[00:34:32] Speaker A: Can you get your head around, or is there any clear, logical way you can see how the initial investigation, preliminary finding, if you like, says, no, you're going to lose this, and then you actually get the finding, which really is in your favor. Is there any indication in that final finding as to why it suddenly went that way, or.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: My only thought around it. There's no official indication. My only thought around it was that the investigator was completely biased and just swallowed every single thing that Rotara Hospital said to them. But Peter Bosher, having read both sides of it and measuring the dates and the actual reasonableness of it, I think he's a good man and actually thought, well, this is actually unreasonable. If I'm just a normal layperson who wants to know government information, I should be able to use layperson information and I should be able to trust that the process isn't going to take five months to get a basic answer.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: I agree with you. Here's the question, though. What happened? Let's imagine an alternate scenario where you ended up with that jaundiced version where they say, no, nothing's found in your favor, even though it should have been, because maybe you didn't have a good final investigator involved, a good final ombudsman here.
Where does that leave people then? Like, in a sense, how do you get any sort of sense of justice? Is there a follow up process? If you were not happy with, you looked at this and you thought, hold on, this doesn't make sense. And like the ombudsman in this case has said, yeah, no, you were right, Jenny. But let's imagine that they were politically motivated, ideologically motivated, and they ruled against you on those grounds. Would you have a process to go back and seek someone else to investigate the ombudsman? What happens at that point?
[00:36:23] Speaker B: Well, nobody informed me of anything. As far as I knew, it was just the final word. But, you know, from the initial findings, I just felt, I felt really deflated and defeated and just went, oh, that's the end of that. The bad guys win, you know, dust myself off and get on with the work on the ground. So it was a real, yeah, real surprise to get that actual official finding.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: That is astounding. And it's part of an ongoing issue I've been talking a bit on the podcast about lately where people are losing trust in the institutional and democratic processes because, like, a really clear example of this has been the recent, over the recent years, the select committee hearings around some of these big bills where they just clearly have ignored the majority. And it's common for me now to speak to people who say, I'm just never going to make another submission on anything ever again because they don't listen. And that's not a healthy thing. Like, imagine how many people feel the same way about the Official Information act process if this is sort of the way they're being treated.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: And I think the only answer to it isn't to make fewer, it's to make more, more submissions and more official information act requests and more complaints to the ombudsman. And it has to be normal people doing it. It has to just be normal. Not waiting for our politicians to do it, not waiting for community advocates to do it. You know, as much as I'm involved for voice for life, I'm just a mum, you know, I'm a mum and I'm a teacher. I'm just, you know, and we should. We are democracy. We are the democratic process.
You know, it's for the people. Let's, you know, actually be the people that are actually getting up and getting involved. And if not us, who, like, who's gonna do it? Who's gonna stand up for the voiceless if it's not us? We can't just wait for the next person because they won't do it either.
[00:38:11] Speaker A: Jenny, that's awesome. And I guess it proves the old maxim that the squeaky wheel does actually get the oil. And you're right. You just gotta be persistent. We would love to have you back on to discuss your next official information act request. And this is why it's important to keep challenging the system to be accountable. And as you discovered, even though it was painful, anybody can do this, right? You don't have to be a lawyer.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: The best advice I can give people is just keep plotting away. Don't make it your whole life. Just, you know, give it a few minutes here and there and go, what, you know, what is really important to this issue, and truth is what's really important to this issue of life and freedom. And, you know, just keep plodding away and don't get too emotionally involved because they'll stomp on you if you do.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: Jenny, thank you so much. And, man, keep up that awesome work.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: Thanks, mate. You too. Fight the fight, eh?
[00:39:11] Speaker A: The Dispatchers podcast is a production of Leftfoot media. If you enjoyed this, this show, then please help us to ensure that more of this great content keeps getting made by becoming a patron of our
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